Ancient Greek is not spoken anymore nor taught as much in schools. Every great literary work written in it has been translated through and through, in almost every language, by many esteemed classicists. Most of all, Ancient Greek is extremely complex, with all those dialects, rules, exceptions, and ghastly irregular verbs… Why dedicate many hours of your life to learning this dead language?

The main reasons I was given by fellow students from my school who were trying to recruit new hellenists were the following:

  • It helps us understand our language (French) better
  • It helps us memorise the names of terms and concepts in a variety of subjects, namely Biology, Physics, Philosophy
  • It develops our rational mind

While they are all true to some extent, these reasons were extremely vague and unappealing. This sort of missionary work is rarely successful, it is simply too abstract, so it enters one ear and exits the other.

Besides, Latin can do all of the above, and we had to do one year of Latin before choosing to study any Ancient Greek at all. Why start all over again?

The appeal I found in Greek early on was just in the alphabet. It gave the language a rather cryptic aspect, different from latin, more mysterious… In short, I was drawn to it by the alphabet, but stayed for the language.

There is an undeniable thrill about facing a challenge. The missionaries were very careful not to mention how difficult Greek was as a subject, as they did not want to scare us off, and that was a mistake. The subject of Ancient Greek should be presented like one of a happy few who shed sweat and tears together just to solve a little puzzle. Even the French mathematician Cédric Villani, who was awarded the Fields medal in 2010, stated that the only real subjects that were really intellectually challenging for him were Latin and Greek. Nothing raises more interest than a code that is difficult to crack.

But you are not simply cracking a code, you are opening a window to the most flourishing and revolutionary civilisation in Ancient History, the pioneer of many sciences and arts. Even during the Roman Hegemony, Greek was spoken and written by the Roman nobility, and many Roman artistic themes were thoroughly copied from the Greek world. The closest you can be to this civilisation, more so than by visiting the Acropolis, is by learning its language. Men from the Renaissance to the 20th century did exactly that, and were profoundly influenced by the language and, consequently, the culture of the Greeks.

One could say that the genius of Pierre de Ronsard, Thomas Hobbes, G.W.F. Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Nietzche, and Oscar Wilde would not have flourished were it not for their study of this language, as well as Latin.

Jean Racine’s poetic abilities and knowledge of classical drama could not have been possible were it not for his rigorous jansenist education that introduced him to the world of Ancient Greek tragedy.

A lot of what these great men wrote about can be traced back to Greek concepts, or words, or themes… If Bernard de Chartres was referencing anything when talking about the giants’ shoulders on which he was standing, it would have been the Greeks.

François Rabelais writes in his Pantagruel that it is shameful for someone to call himself a “learned person” if he does not have any knowledge of Greek, which is admittedly a very radical stance by today’s standards, but not too outlandish for 16th century France.

Everyone knows those philosophers, playwrights, and artists, but it would be foolish to view their works as self sufficient, and completely brush away the Ancient World that made it all possible in the process.

The important role that Ancient Greek played in schools, notably in France, has greatly diminished ever since the 1970s, its students only benefitting from two hours every week instead of five, and starting a year or even two years later than what was the norm. Most people only see the side-benefits from studying Greek, like its usefulness for learning technical terms in other subjects, which is certainly interesting, but not enough of a reason to study the grammar, syntax rules, irregular verb forms etc. Today, there are talks about replacing the study of the language by a simple study of Ancient History, but that is missing the point of studying Classics entirely.

Many fail to see the core interest in learning Greek: it makes you think. This thinking is just you following the footsteps of the Greats from the last centuries. You are, like them, reading the texts, translating the texts, and imitating the texts. You cannot equal their genius, but you can at least brush up on your Greek.